| I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; For I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; When he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. --Hosea 11.9-10 (RSV) We often hear that the God of the Hebrew scriptures is a God of wrath, a far cry from the loving, forgiving God of the Christian scriptures. But this passage from Hosea offers a surprising take on the matter. God is still angry, that is not at issue: the nation of Israel has repeatedly turned away from the God who can protect them to serve false gods, the works of human hands. And this situation has only gotten worse as Israel’s prosperity has increased (10.1). They have provoked God by being ungrateful, unfaithful, and unrepentant, so much so that “their deeds do not permit them to return to their God” (5.4). Only the wrath of God will have any persuasive power over them now. But look at what God says about his own wrath! As he contemplates his own plans for this rebellious people, his “heart recoils within [him, and his] compassion grows warm and tender” (11.8). He does not want to be angry with his own people—it is not the way he wants to reveal himself to us. He would much prefer to be always the gentle, tender, loving God. But God is not a mortal. And contrary to what we might expect, this is good news. We may think that as humans we are more forgiving than the angry God of Israel, but in fact, it is just the opposite: unlike us, God is not controlled by his anger. “I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal….” Were the punishment left to us to carry out, Israel would be utterly destroyed. The irony is rich: we complain that God is too angry, but the problem is more properly ours. The examples of history show over and over how destructive humans can be left to our own devices. Our wrath consumes us: it takes over and we cannot escape its grip. God, on the other hand, always remains free to decide whether to act upon his wrath. We do not have this ability. And so God, unlike mortals, can decide “not [to] come in wrath.” But the story does not end there. For God is still angry with Israel and still has to act. The situation as it is cannot stand; Israel must learn to keep itself holy for the Lord. But what will God do? God will still roar with anger, but notice what the result will be: his people will not run away, but run back, and he “will return them to their homes” (11.11). God’s anger always serves to draw us back to him. It is an anger borne, unlike ours, from true love. Whereas human anger leads to destruction, God’s anger leads to reconciliation. This is good news, for it both helps us understand how the angry Hebrew God can also be the loving Christian God, and reveals to us the proper nature of anger, of its connection to love. We may provoke God through our unfaithfulness, we may run so far from him that our deeds will not permit us to return to him. In any number of ways, we may make God angry. But we should be thankful that it is God whom we anger, for God’s anger will not destroy us, but will bring us safely home to him. It is, rather, human anger we must worry about, for short of God’s intervention, human anger always leads to death. |
| The Anger of God, the Anger of Man |